Calling a mom ‘delusional’ without meeting her cost a Key Biscayne psychologist

Health Care admin June 17, 2026 0 Comments

Calling a mom ‘delusional’ without meeting her cost a Key Biscayne psychologist

Using the word “delusional” to describe a parent in a report to be used in a child custody hearing doesn’t automatically get a psychologist fined.

Unless, that is, a state licensing board finds out the psychologist never talked to the parent, never met the parent and had no incidents that objectively pointed to delusion.

Monday, Florida became the second state to fine Key Biscayne’s John A. Moran for the above unethical presumption.

READ MORE: Key Biscayne psychologist called a mom he never met ‘delusional’ in custody case

Moran has been fined $2,000 by Florida’s Board of Psychology and charged $640 in case costs. He’s also required to take 18 hours of continuing education courses, broken down as 10 hours on child custody evaluation and child custody assessment; three hours on ethics; three hours on risk assessment; and two hours in laws and rules.

This is the first discipline on the Florida license Moran has held since Nov. 17, 2022. His license in Arizona remains clean. Moran’s website lists a Scottsdale UPS store as a contact address.

READ MORE: More women say a South Florida psychiatrist asked them to remove clothes

Assessment without any association

Florida’s fines and requirements fall under “reciprocal discipline,” a state punishing a licensed professional for punitive actions by another state in which the professional is licensed. In this case, Florida is fining Moran after Oregon dunned him $2,500 for violating the ethical standard for “Basis for Assessments.”

In March 2021, Oregon granted Moran, who was and remains licensed in Arizona, a visitor’s license to practice psychology in Oregon until March 25, 2022. According to the findings of fact in Oregon’s final order against Moran, the divorce attorney for an Oregon husband hired Moran for an “expert consultation on relevant family custody issues.”

Moran handed over his report on “parental alienation in the family” to the lawyer on April 26, 2022, after his visitor’s license had expired.

“In the report conclusions, [Moran] suggested that the court change the legal and physical custody of the children exclusively to father “while mother’s delusional disorder is receiving treatment,” the Oregon final order’s findings of fact said. “In the report conclusions, [Moran] suggested that the mother receive individual treatment “to resolve her delusional disorder.”

But Moran “never interviewed or met the mother and had an insufficient objective basis on which to determine that she met the criteria for delusional disorder,” the findings of fact said. “Nevertheless, he referred to the mother’s purported delusional disorder in at least three places in the report and included in his report a definition of delusion, and summary of the characteristics of delusional disorder.”